Infants and other incontinent individuals wear disposable garments such as diapers to receive and contain urine and other body exudes. Absorbent garments having fixed sides (e.g., training pants or pull-on diapers) have become popular. In order to contain body exudates as well as to fit a wide variety of body shapes and sizes, these garments must fit snugly about the waist and legs of the wearer without drooping, sagging or sliding down from its position on the torso as well as fitting larger wearers without causing irritation to the skin due to the product being too tight.
Many types of pull-on garments use conventional elastic elements secured in an elastically contractible condition in the waist and leg openings. For example, pull-on garments known as “balloon type” pants are contracted by elasticized bands in specific zones of the product while the remaining material tends to blouse. Examples of such pull-on garments are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,171,239 published on Dec. 15, 1992, U.S. Pat. No. 4,610,681 published on Sep. 9, 1986. These garments will fit a range of waist and leg sizes due to the fact that the contractive elastic openings will expand to accommodate various size wearers. Nonetheless, the range of sizes is limited because the elastic elements, which enable this variation in size, have a limited degree of stretch. The narrow elastic bands used in the waist opening and the leg openings also tend to concentrate the fit forces in a narrow zone of the wearer's body leading to increased incidence of skin marking of the wearer.
Another type of pull-on garment employs waist elastics and side elastics. Examples of such garments are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,940,464 published on Jul. 10, 1990, U.S. Pat. No. 5,246,433 published on Sep. 21, 1993, U.S. Pat. No. 5,591,155 published on Jan. 7, 1997 and EP publication 0 526 868 A1 published on Feb. 10, 1993. Such garments have side elastics at both left and right sides of the garments and waist elastics extending along a part of the waist opening. The side elastics are disposed extending between the waist opening and the leg openings. The waist elastics extend only a part of the front waist and a part of the back waist between the left and right side elastics. The side elastics and the waist elastics do not continuously extend. Therefore, the garments do not continuously stretch around the waist opening and available extensibility around the waist opening is limited. Further, because the side elastic comprises a single elastic material extending from the waist opening to the leg opening, the side elastic has only homogeneous extensibility between the waist opening and the leg opening. It does not allow many flexibility in designing a good form fitting garment, e.g., it does not facilitate designs to differentiate the property of extensibility around the leg opening from extensibility around the waist opening.
Other examples of pull-on garments having waist elastics and side elastics are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,545,158 published on Aug. 13, 1996 and EP publication 0 547 497 A2 published on Jun. 23, 1993. The garment disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,545,158 has a pair of elastic side segments and elastic waistbands which are joined to the waist border of the garment. The side portions of the elastic waistbands are overlapped with the elastic side segments and do not substantially inhibit the elasticity of the elastic side segments. However, the portion where the elastic side segments and the elastic waistbands are overlapped becomes bulky and redundant and limits the available stretch by the lowest stretch material. Further, the resultant stretch forces are additive in the overlapped region. In addition, the portion where the two elastic materials overlap requires higher force to stretch for application of the garment to the wearer. The garment disclosed in EP publication 0 547 497 A2 has the essentially same structure, therefore the same drawbacks as the garment disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,545,158. EP publication 0 547 497 A2 further discloses a garment comprising a triangular shaped side elastic at both left and right sides of the garment which has a decreased end edge adjacent to the waist elastic and which is still overlapped with the waist elastic. Due to the geometry of the triangular shaped side elastic, the garment has portions of significantly reduced extensibility at the sides of the garment between the leg openings and the waist opening, reducing ease of application and increasing pressure at a portion of the side panel potentially reducing the fit range.
Thus, none of the existing art provides all of the advantages and benefits of the present invention.